How Restaurants Got So Loud
theatlantic.com
How Restaurants Got So Loud
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Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud
#2It's worth mentioning that the noise levels of restaurants and public spaces can also be inaccessible to those who hearing impairments and those who may be sensitive to overstimulating audio input. I can personally attest to being in busy restaurants in which my grandmother simply cannot have a full conversation with me since there's so much surrounding noise.
Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud
#3This is a pet hate of mine - glad to see it's not just me getting older. A restaurant round the corner from me has acoustic foam on the under-side of all the hard wood chairs and tables, and that helps a little. As soon as I find a bar that's decided to carpet its ceiling, it's going to be my new favourite hang (I understand why places don't want carpet on the floor. Apart from anything else, it's hard to keep clean)
Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud
#4Yes! It seems like somehow many bar/restaurant owners have no interest in making their spaces sonically comfortable. I've been in some that felt like they were designed for maximum reverb. The few ones with acoustic panels on the walls / ceilings are so nice in comparison. I really hope caring about the way your place sounds becomes standard.
Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud
#5One thing that's becoming near-impossible is finding places to drink (as in pubs or bars) without piped music. This contributes significantly to noise. It's done of course so that we shout ourselves hoarse trying to have a conversation, so we buy more drinks to lubricate our throat, but even formerly quiet pubs near me have started doing it.
Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud
#6Locally (Stockholm, Sweden) the head of the city libraries has made a statement of battling the 'quietness norm' in libraries. Most of them now have playgrounds, one in Kista (where I happened to live at the time) won awards for best library in the world and in Sweden the same year.
It was completely unusable for what me and my fiance usually do at the library. The study rooms had the ventilation system for the building running through them with a loud dull noise making going back out to the playground-ridden small library with build int coffee-shop feel like putting on active noise supressing headphones. And the playground + café + it being placed in a mall (as opposed to across the street in the municipality building like it used to be) made reading or browsing a hard task.
My fiance who has ASD really has no public space available at all in this city anymore and we are moving to another city where we know of accessible quieter places, including parks and libraries without built-in noise generators.
./rant
Carpeting here is extremely rare. Scandinavian minimalism everywhere. The article helps me understand why the local chinese restaurang, with carpeting, tablecloth and padded chairs, is so nice to stay at.
Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud
#7I'd love to read an analysis of how the world in general has gotten so loud. Even a few hundred years ago, the centers of massive cities like Paris, Rome, or Istanbul must have been significantly quieter, being that cars, horns, trains, speakers, boomboxes, industrial plants, airplanes and everything else that creates noise pollution didn't exist.
Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud
#8It's worth mentioning that the noise levels of restaurants and public spaces can also be inaccessible to those who hearing impairments and those who may be sensitive to overstimulating audio input. I can personally attest to being in busy restaurants in which my grandmother simply cannot have a full conversation with me since there's so much surrounding noise.
I try to find the quieter places... I find it damn near impossible to pick out one voice in a room full of muffled, echoing ones. It completely throws me off the conversation I'm trying to have with the person I'm with.
Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud
#9One thing that's becoming near-impossible is finding places to drink (as in pubs or bars) without piped music. This contributes significantly to noise. It's done of course so that we shout ourselves hoarse trying to have a conversation, so we buy more drinks to lubricate our throat, but even formerly quiet pubs near me have started doing it.
I help organise events and it's been our biggest complaint for some venues: that as the afternoon progresses, the music gets so loud it's impossible to hold a conversation.
We pass the complaints along, but the response is usually "Corporate insists we do this, we hate it too, apparently it makes people buy more drinks".
In practice, at least from the data I've gathered, it drives people away.
Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud
#10Locally (Stockholm, Sweden) the head of the city libraries has made a statement of battling the 'quietness norm' in libraries. Most of them now have playgrounds, one in Kista (where I happened to live at the time) won awards for best library in the world and in Sweden the same year. It was completely unusable for what me and my fiance usually do at the library. The study rooms had the ventilation system for the build…
I don't think it's just Scandinavian minimalism. You want hard floors when you know there will be snow and rain for a large part of the year. It would be impossible to keep things clean otherwise. Just look to Svalbard where you take of your shoes even when going to a bar.